Friday, July 11, 2008

The summer right after high school was a really great summer. My friends and I spent a lot of time doing really stupid stuff and enjoying every minute of it. One of our default activities was to go to a park nearby with slupees and sit on the Knoll. If we tired of sitting, we would play on the playground or go "explore" the gully behind the park. I have many fond memories of that park, and the gully, including (but not limited to) the discovering of The Gully Monster by Jacob and Peter and the expedition I led Arrakis on which led to us scrambling up the hill and going through a random back yard.

Today, after Swing Club, I went back to this park with my new friend, Jake. I simply wanted to swing, but once we got there, I quickly started thinking about and recounting all my adventures there. I ended up going with Jake into the gully. I led him (though sometimes he led too, I guess) on a treck not entirely dissimilar to the one with Arrakis years ago. It's hard to really get lost in that place, but we didn't necisarrily know where we were at any given time, or where we could come out. We ended up having to jump a fence to get into a church parking lot, then walked back to the park via the road.

I've forgotten how much fun stuff like that can be. Maybe it's just part of growing up, but we don't go on random adventures like that anymore. I don't see why. It was exciting to go forth and not know exactly where we would end up. There was very little danger in it. Why don't we do stuff like that anymore? I guess as we get older it gets harder to lose ourselves to enterprises like that. We get too caught up in other things to really enjoy the moment and just go forth and take what comes.